"I have only one dream," she interrupted him softly.
"And five years will pass very quickly," he continued. "Possibly it will not be as bad as that, and afterward all this land we love will be free to us forever. Gladly will I remain and take my punishment if in the end it will make us happier, Nada."
"I have only one dream," she repeated, caressing his cheek with her hand, "and that is you, Roger. Where-ever you take me I shall be the happiest woman in the world."
"Woman," he laughed, scarcely breathing the word aloud.
"Yes, I am a woman—now"
"And yet forever and ever the little girl of Cragg's Ridge," he cried with sudden passion, crushing her close to him. "I'd lose my life sooner than I would lose her, Nada—the little girl with flying hair and strawberry stain on her nose, and who believed so faithfully in the Man in the Moon. Always I shall worship her as the little goddess who came down to me from somewhere in heaven!"
Yet all through that day, as they waited for Father John's return, he saw more and more of the wonder of woman that had come to crown the glory of Nada's wifehood, and his heart trembled with joy at the miracle of it. There was something vastly sweet in the change of her. She was no longer the utterly dependent little thing, possibly caring for him because he was big and strong and able to protect her; she was a woman, and loved him as a woman, and not because of fear or helplessness. And then came the thrilling mystery of another thing. He found himself, in turn, beginning to depend upon her, and in their planning her calm decision and quiet reasoning strengthened him with new confidence and made his heart sing with gladness. With his eyes on the smooth and velvety coils of hair which she had twisted woman-like on her head, he said,
"With your hair like that you are my Margaret of Anjou, and the other way—with it down you are my little Nada of Cragg's Ridge. And I—I don't quite understand why God should be so good to me."
And this day Peter was trying in his dumb way to analyze the change. The touch of Nada's hand thrilled him, as it did a long time ago, and still he sensed the difference. Her voice was even softer when she put her cheek down to his whiskered face and talked to him, but in it he missed that which he could not quite bring back clearly through the lapse of time—the childish comradeship of her. Yet he began to worship her anew, even more fiercely than he had loved the Nada of old. He was content now to lie with his nose touching her foot or dress; but when in the sunset of early evening she went into her room, and came out a little later with her curling hair clouding her shoulders and breast, and tied with a faded ribbon she had brought from Cragg's Ridge, he danced about her, yelping joyously, and she accepted the challenge in a wild race with him to the edge of the clearing.
Panting and flushed she ran back to Jolly Roger, and rested in his arms.